The friend I was visiting last weekend told me - with perverse pride - that her eldest boy had caused a few ripples of disapproval at his primary school recently by expressing a passionate admiration for Oliver Cromwell. This is England, not Ireland, we're dealing with here; but it seems that, at this school, at least, the prevailing orthodoxy these days is staunchly pro-Royalist.
My friend explained that her son's robustly pro-Cromwell stance could be attributed to this book (purportedly written by one L. Dugarde Peach - I've been searching for anagrams in that!), one of the Ladybird series of reading primers that we all grew up with in the UK - back in the good old days. She has kept her copy all these years and is now sharing it with her own children.
Mr Peach's succinct explanation of the cause of the English Civil War is as follows:
"King Charles was a very stupid man."
There's a genius in its simplicity. The more I think on it, the more I fancy that this could be historiography's "theory of everything". Stupidity is the ultimate explanation for all varieties of social upheaval (riots, strikes, revolutions, wars) and for the outcome of all great power struggles (revolutions, wars, general elections, talent contests) and for the origin of all man-made disasters and so on. Yes, the result of any conflict can always be attributed to the greater stupidity of the losing side. (I recall a friend of mine in the British Army once quipped: "Tactics is how you lose a battle. Strategy is how you lose a war.") The task of the historian to analyse and "explain" events would be so much easier if this were kept in mind.
Did no-one ever think of this before?
5 comments:
L Du Garde Peach was indeed a genius, and not as obscure as you make him sound: Google has 12,000 references for him.
Sellars and Yeatman also summed up the period admirably: The Roundheads were Right but Repulsive, the Cavaliers were Wrong but Wromantic.
"one of the Ladybird series of reading primers that we all grew up with in the UK"
I've often wondered what happened to Peter and Jane. And It's a Knockout on a Friday night.
Well, I only found 212 returns for him, Tony. And most of those were for worthless directory sites that post blank pages for every imaginable name (or every name they've been able to cull from the Internet somewhere), or from secondhand book sites.
I didn't mean to imply that he was 'obscure', only that his name sounded to me made-up. However, his Internet profile might well justify labelling him as 'obscure' as well, I think. After all, it's not the quantity but the quality (and authority and prominence) of Web listings that matters. Even several thousands or tens of of thousands of returns wouldn't count for much if 90% of them were facetious bloggers like me saying, "Who, pray, is L. DuGarde Peach?"
I too miss It's A Knockout, Stuart, and, even more, Jeux Sans Frontieres. Has the BBC not brought out a nostalgia compilation DVD set??
Your theories have potential Froog.
"...the result of any conflict can always be attributed to the greater stupidity of the losing side."
The Art of War is on my night stand right now. I haven't gotten to the Stupidity chapter yet.
A good choice for bringing on slumber quickly, OMG!
My scorn for Sun Tzu knows no bounds. I think that's probably the most overrated book of all time. As Basil Fawlty once said of Sybil: Specialist subject: stating the bleedin' obvious.
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